Project Migrante: Health Status and Access to Health Care Among Migrants on Mexico's Northern Border, 2020-2021

The Migrante Project is a binational study that examines health status and access to health care among Mexican migrants. Since 2007, Migrante investigators have implemented a series of cross-sectional probability-based surveys on Mexico's northern border. The current phase of Migrante includes three survey waves (N=1,200 each), each focused on a specific topic area. Data for the Wave I survey focused on HIV and sexual/reproductive health. Wave II is focused on non-communicable disease. Data collection for this wave is ongoing. Wave III (data to be collected in 2023) will focus on mental health and substance use. All surveys contain additional questions on socio-demographics, health status, health care access, migration history, and contextual factors related to migration stage. All waves also include biometric testing (for example, rapid HIV testing). Participants are sampled from four different migrant flows:

<strong>Northbound flow:</strong> Migrants traveling north and arriving at the border from other regions in Mexico
<strong>Southbound flow - Border:</strong> Migrants traveling from the Mexico side of the Mexico-US border to points farther south
<strong>Southbound flow - U.S.:</strong> Migrants returning to Mexico from the U.S. voluntarily
<strong>Deported flow:</strong> Migrants returning to Mexico from the U.S via deportation

The data herein come from the Wave I survey and were collected in Tijuana, Matamoros, and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico between August 2020 and September 2021. The study employed a multistage sampling design, with a combination of geographic and temporal sampling units, modeled after the Encuesta sobre Migración en la Frontera Norte de México (EMIF Norte). Migrante sampling sites for Wave I included bus stations, airports, and deportation stations in each of the three cities.
Eligible individuals were at least 18 years old, born in Mexico or other Latin American countries, fluent in Spanish, not residents of the city where the survey is being conducted (except for deported migrants), and traveling for labor reasons or change of residence. In total, there were 1,398 observations (northbound flow N=347, southbound flow N=703, and deported flow N=348) in Wave I, with 1,257 individuals completing the Wave I survey. Three hundred and six of these individuals belonged to the deported flow, 306 to the northbound flow, 336 to the southbound border flow, and 309 to the southbound U.S. flow. Consent rates ranged from 13% to 98% depending on the flow and survey city. Migrante surveys can be used to produce population-level estimates of health outcomes and health care access, investigate variations across migration phases, and explore the impact of health care and immigration policies on migrants' health outcomes, healthcare access, and individual and environmental health determinants.